


The Hitman and Her

by Carmexgirl



Category: None - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:20:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmexgirl/pseuds/Carmexgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A hitman learns of his latest assignment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hitman and Her

The call came quite unexpectedly; three familiar rings that signalled I was to meet my employer at the designated place, in half an hour. It was a pattern we had become accustomed to over the years, one that was suited to both of us equally and borne out of a need for the utmost discretion. I would meet him, he would give me the assignment, and we would take our leave of each other as quickly as we could. It was a simple arrangement; I find the best ones always are.

I reluctantly bid my companions farewell, telling them I had urgent business that had to be attended to right at that moment. They laughed, spilled their wine and told me that I always had ‘urgent business,’ that in their opinion, no business was so urgent that it couldn’t wait until we’d finished another bottle. I merely smiled and shook my head, wrapped my scarf around my neck and buttoned up my thick woollen coat in an attempt to shield myself from the interminable cold outside. The coldest winter for a generation apparently. A winter made for sitting inside and drinking instead of braving the treacherous ice and freezing temperatures.

The cold hit me as soon as I ventured outside, the stillness of the night air a stark contrast to the warm-hearted revelry I had just extricated myself from. The moon hung low in a clear black sky potted with stars; I counted the three of Orion’s belt as I walked to my car, the freshly formed ground frost crunching under my boots. My car sat forlornly on the car park, a sheen of ice already covering the roof, bonnet and windscreen even though it had been at the most two hours. It started on the second attempt and I sat there in the driver’s seat, shivering while the heaters circulated their lukewarm air around me. As the temperature increased inside the car I watched the ice eventually melt and slowly run down the windscreen, the wipers making that awful screeching sound as they tried desperately to remove enough of what was left so I could see where I would be going. Soon my vision was such I was able to manoeuvre the car onto the main road and towards the designated rendezvous point, in enough time to meet my deadline.

I saw him before he saw me. It was why he’d employed me after all. He was standing next to the familiar bench, the one dedicated to some old soldier who’d spent his latter days feeding the pigeons before finally succumbing to his old age one hot Thursday afternoon a few years ago. I was sure he’d appreciate the sentiment if not the graffiti that adorned most of it.

I sat down as far to the left hand side as possible, while he stood and turned away from me. “Thanks for coming,” he said curtly.

“Thank you for meeting me,” I said. I waited for a moment before adding, “Cold, isn’t it?”

“Very,” he replied. Then silence, my rather pathetic attempt at small talk falling flat on its face.

We sat for a few minutes, neither of us being particularly inclined to speak. I stared out across the grass, my eyes drawn to a flickering lamp post in the distance. On. Off. On off. On. Off. Still he said nothing. He always liked to take his time, but for some reason I felt that this was different, that there was some marked hesitancy thought I didn’t know why.

I shivered, and could take the silence no longer. “Do you…have something for me?” I inquired. It was late, and freezing. I didn’t want to stay out there longer than I had to.

He coughed and sighed, evidently thinking very careful about what he was about to say. “Yes, I do,” he said eventually. “Although, I would rather we discussed this back at your car. Head to the car park, and I will follow shortly.”

I nodded and stood up. This was unusual, very unusual, and I confess that I was put on edge somewhat by this. Our usual modus operandi involved meeting at night in the park, him saying a cursory ‘hello’ before handing me an envelope with details of my assignment. There was never much talking, and as soon as I had what I needed I left quickly, taking care not to be seen. The fact that this time seemed to be different unnerved me somewhat.

I eventually reached my car and sat inside, waiting for him to walk to me. Presently, through the gloom of the evening I saw him striding purposefully towards the car. He was a tall, thin man with long legs and fingers, who had the poise of an aristocrat and the grace of a ballet dancer. I had never seen his face clearly, but I always imagined it to be quite handsome. He opened the passenger door and practically glided into the seat before closing it gently again. I was about to start the engine when he took my hand, moving it away from the ignition. “I need to speak to you first, before we head to our destination.”

We? There had never been a ‘we’ in this relationship. The boundaries were clear; employer and employee, and nothing more. They were adhered to with strict rigidity. He knew very little about me, and I knew nothing about him; it was a perfectly functional relationship. He always gave me my assignment, and then disappeared. I would give him a call to tell him it had been completed, and a few days later the money would appear in my bank account. He took no interest in my methods, merely checked on the results and yet here he was, sitting in my car and talking about ‘our’ destination.

Of course, I knew better than to ask questions. As I knew full well, all would be revealed eventually.

“I have an assignment for you,” he said and I nodded. This, at least, was normal.

“It is rather closer to home than I would like, nevertheless it is imperative it is executed with the utmost discretion.”

I nodded. “Discretion…” I began, wanting to use the old ‘is my middle name’ adage before thinking better of it.

“Yes, discretion,” he nodded, and it suddenly struck me that I could see his features clearly for the first time in all the years we had known each other. As I had suspected he was not an unhandsome man; pointed nose, medium length brown hair swept back over his head in waves, thin lips and a prominent jaw line that told of fine old English heritage. He licked his lips as he talked, his breath coming out in puffs of moisture that hung in the air for a millisecond before disappearing. “Discretion is key to this whole thing. It is a very messy affair, all told.”

He reached into his jacket and pulled out the brown envelope I was so familiar with. Putting his hand inside, he pulled out a black folder, handing it to me like it was something precious. I opened it up, took note of the photograph and description before stopping on the name.

The name.

“Is she…” I began.

“Yes,” he nodded. “So you can see why it’s a little…messy, shall we say? There can be no margin for error.”

I motioned to look through the papers when a light flashed behind me. A car had pulled into the car park and was making its way towards us. My employer took the folder and it under the seat, ducking low so as not to be seen. It was probably only a dog-walker out for a nightly stroll, but in this line of work it does not do to assume in the absence of facts. ‘Be wary of everybody’ is my motto, and it’s held me in good stead for all the years I’ve been in this particular employment.

“We need to leave this place,” he said, and I nodded in agreement. I started the engine and soon we were away, travelling down the highway. After a mile or so he motioned me to go left. “Turn into the lake,” he said and I instantly froze. Of all the places we could have talked, I didn’t want to go to the lake. I turned to protest but caught his eyes, staring me down and daring me to defy him. “Turn into the lake,” he repeated and I merely nodded, swallowing thickly as I turned left, then right, then right again before a sharp left and down a single track towards the south end of the lake. No one would be there at that time of night, in those temperatures. No one in their right mind, anyway.

I found a dark corner to the edge of the water and parked, turning off the engine and the headlights. We sat there, staring out at the vast frozen plain before us, a huge table of ice borne out of months of cold. It was like a reflection of the black sky above, the moon reflecting off the ice and bathing it in a kind of ethereal glow. The place was eerily quiet and I couldn’t suppress a shiver as I thought about the last time I had been here, four years ago. It hadn’t changed that much; a little overgrown maybe, and there was a small, turret-like structure to the left one side that wasn’t there before. 

I thought back to when I had last been here, unwanted memories surfacing when they had been so successfully hidden. A click brought me out of my reverie, as my employer turned on the inside light of the car. He picked up the envelope again and handed me the folder. I turned to the photograph inside.

“She’s…beautiful, isn’t she.” He said. I merely nodded. “It’s why it makes this so…difficult.”

Because if she had been ugly, one wonders whether it would have mattered at all, I thought absently. Still I said nothing. He obviously had a story to tell, and I was being paid to listen.

“Oh, Celine,” he sighed, looking at her picture and shaking his head. “Why did it ever come to this?” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a cigarette. I noticed his hands shook slightly as he tried to light it. This was unusual; he was always so very calm, almost emotionless. Although, I suppose when you’re asking someone to kill your wife, it must be very stressful even for the most hardened of men.

Once lit, he took a drag of his cigarette, letting the smoke blow out in a long, drawn out sigh. “I’d had my suspicions, you see, for a few months now. A man can always tell, I believe, when something isn’t quite right in his household, and I knew that something was definitely wrong somewhere. My wife is an intelligent woman, or so she would have people believe, but in this I believe she has been very, very stupid.”

I flicked through the folder as he talked, a multitude of pictures taken from every possible angle. Her hair was a beautiful auburn, cascading in waves about her face and shining in a hint of sunlight. She wore red lipstick and meticulously shaped eyebrows atop a pale, flawless face. Her eyes were large, framed by long eyelashes, her high cheekbones dusted with blusher. In all the pictures I saw of her she looked tall, and impeccably turned out. The only thing I never saw in any of the pictures was a smile, just the same cold expression; the same slightly vacant look her deep green eyes. She reminded me of someone, someone who’s face I’d very much rather forget and the reason I desperately didn’t want to come here in the first place.

He began to speak again, his tone distant. “It was the little things at first,” he said shaking his head, not in sadness, but in the manner of one who is disappointed with a child for spilling blackcurrant juice over their best cream carpet. “She became very distant towards me. Of course, I thought that after everything we had been through this was to be somewhat expected, but it was the drawing back, the flinching at even the slightest touch that had me suspicious. With each passing day she seemed to draw further and further away from me, until our only real conversations were about trivial things, running the household, the maids, redecorating the nursery, that kind of thing. I gave her space, and time. It seemed the only thing I could do.”

He took another drag of his cigarette, and stared out across the frozen lake. “She changed, then. She started to become far too emotional, irrational even. Shouting, screaming, crying, all of that. One day I came home to find the maid sitting in the kitchen, shaking. She’d gone mad, she said, throwing paint around the nursery, smashing up the cot and weeping to herself uncontrollably. She’d refused assistance, shouting at the maid to get out and leave her be, that it was something she’d had to do. The maid was scared for my wife’s health; she was still on medication from the hospital you see, still recovering and it did not do to exert herself in such a manner.”

“Of course, I considered getting professional help for her, taking her away for a few months to calm down and sort things out. It does not do to have a madwoman in the house, especially not when business associates call regularly. I have an image to maintain, and she was jeopardising that. She calmed down somewhat after that though, gradually started to get back to her old self. At first I was glad, until I realised the reason for the change.”

“We were at a party, the first one we had both attended since she had fallen ill. She looked…beautiful, like her old self.” He smiled briefly to himself before continuing.

“I watched as she danced with countless others, smiling, laughing. It made me happy, until I saw something that unsettled me, made me feel uneasy. I saw her dancing with a former business partner of mine. We’d gone our separate ways years ago but were still on friendly terms, and still visited each other regularly.”

He paused for a moment, before taking a deep breath. “It was something in the way he held her; too tight, too close, far too…familiar. I watched as he whispered something in her ear and she threw her head back, baring her throat and laughing, a laugh right from the stomach. Everyone was looking at her, standing there in his arms, but she didn’t care, just carried on dancing and laughing. Then, I saw all eyes turn to me, pity in their depths as they shook their heads. It was then I knew. I just knew. She wanted to make me look a fool and she had succeeded. Not only that, but she had done it in front of my closest associates, in such a public place, with maximum effect.”

I nodded, although one thing troubled me. It did not do to question my employer—I had seen firsthand what happened to anyone who crossed him—but I found I couldn’t let this lie. “I understand your predicament,” I began, “I do, but forgive me. Would it not be better to file for divorce? Could you not get out of it that way, get rid of her without going to the trouble of hiring me? Even with all of the safeguards I have in place, you wouldn’t be above suspicion.”

He laughed, and it was like his laughed spread from the car outwards, echoing around the silent lake. I fancied I saw something move out of the corner of my eye, that his laughter had disturbed something in the distance, but reasoned it must have been a bird or some nocturnal creature.

“Oh, to be a man of your standing, where reputation doesn’t matter,” he said. “No. No, it cannot do. You see, it gets worse. After that party, she became more open with it, more brazen. She flaunted it in front of me, revelled in it, you could say. It was like she was taunting me, daring me to make a move and knowing that I wouldn’t, that my reputation means everything to me. The final straw came when I found out she was again with child, only the thing growing inside her was not of my making, but his.”

Oh. I looked at his face, and could tell this angered him greatly. He was shaking again, battling to keep his voice even despite the emotion it must have wrought within him. It was then I saw it. Just a glimpse of something over his shoulder, something moving. I didn’t know if it was a bird or bat of some sort as it was gone so quickly, but there was definitely movement there. I looked back to his face and saw him staring at me expectantly.

“I see,” I said, still slightly perturbed by the movement I thought I had seen. “So for that reason, you want her gone.”

“Yes,” he said. “As quickly and cleanly as possible.”

“It’s going to be difficult,” I said. “As I said before, you will not be above suspicion.”

“Ah,” he replied, eyes brightening. “I have thought about that, which is why I have engineered a plan. You see, I intend to invite a few close acquaintances around tomorrow night, just for drinks. They will be my alibi. My wife will be at her lover’s; I know this because I have charted her comings and goings and know exactly where she will be and for how long. She lies to me, tells me she is having drinks with the ladies and always takes a bottle of our most expensive Rioja. She is nothing if not a naïve creature of habit. I have one bottle that I have doctored, adding in sleeping pills before replacing the seal. They should be enough to put both under for some considerable time. This is where you come in.”

He started smiling, white pointed teeth glistening in the tungsten yellow glow of the interior light. “When they are out cold, you must take care of my wife and her lover as cleanly as possible. I want it quick, relatively painless, and with no mess. Then, you are to drive out here, see…” He pointed forwards, “see the island covered with trees over there?”

I nodded. I knew that place all too well. “Bury them there. As deep as you can. No one goes there, you see, especially not in this cold. You will not be seen. They won’t be found there. There will be nothing to link their disappearances to me, and no one will have to know that she was with child. My reputation will remain intact.”

As he spoke the words, I heard a loud crashing sound, like a tree falling. The car jolted, and I immediately opened the door to see what was going on. 

Nothing. Everything was silent. My employer sat there staring at me, head slightly tilted to one side in apparent confusion. “What are you doing?” He asked.

“Sorry,” I said, getting back into the car and closing the door. “I thought I heard something.”

He laughed, a high pitched sound that seemed not only to echo around the car, but around the whole lake. “What on earth is the matter? You’re acting like a frightened animal.”

“It’s nothing, really.” I settled back down in my seat. I must not let my imagination run away with itself, I mentally chastised myself.

“So my plan is perfect, yes?” He said. I nodded. “Then we should talk about money.”

Ah yes, money. That was a subject I was far more comfortable with. “Though a good plan,” I began, “it is not without its risks. The fact that there are two of them will double my usual rate first of all, and then you have to add on the risk factor.” 

He nodded. I was about to name a price when I saw it, and my blood turned to ice.

It was only a second, maybe two but no more. That was all I needed to know it was her face, staring at me through the window before it disappeared. Pale, drawn, eyes wide only this time they were not pleading, they were full of malice.

I shivered, could feel the panic rising yet my employer spoke as though nothing was wrong, as though she wasn’t there. “Yes, I understand,” he began, but I did not hear the rest. All I heard was the scream A scream four years in the making, made up of abject terror and something more sinister. It was the scream of someone wanting revenge.

My employer was still talking. “We need to leave here,” I said with some urgency, the sense of dread permeating every muscle in my body, making them tense as if ready to spring into action.

“Leave?” He scoffed. “We haven’t finished negotiating.”

“Anything. Anything, just name your price. We have to go.” My mouth became drier with every word, each syllable thick and heavy, sticking in my throat. I caught the flash of something white out of the corner of my eye but I dared not look, holding the gaze on my employer as though my very existence depended upon it.

“What in the world has gotten into you?” My employer said, confusion and mild annoyance in his voice.

It was then I heard that squeaking, scraping sound, the sound of bare feet finding purchase on metal. A white sheet billowed in a sudden wind and I sat, stock still, not daring to move my head even a millimetre to the right. The bonnet. She was on the car bonnet. Climbing on the car bonnet, nails scratching the paintwork as she tried to grip what was not there.

I closed my eyes. “Can’t you see her,” I said quietly, and my voice shook.

“See what?” My employer replied.

“She’s there. Watching us.”

“Get a grip,” he said harshly. “There is no one there.”

I questioned myself, thought I had perhaps imagined it. A long day, a stressful journey and the dredging up of memories I had long buried had perhaps caused me to hallucinate. Slowly I turned my head, and what I saw made me freeze in abject terror. Her face was mere centimetres away from my own, pale, thin, once beautiful but now twisted into something grotesque. A vicious parody of a once beautiful face.

The thing, because it was surely no longer a woman, not after four years in those watery depths, opened its mouth wide and screamed, the sound echoing around the once-silent lake. I felt as though my eardrums would burst from the pressure as the sound went on, and on, and on.

I had to make it stop, I had to. I reached under the seat, fumbled desperately for my gun before aiming it at the window. My hand was shaking so much it was nearly impossible to get a clear shot of the thing.

“What the…” My employer shouted. He leaned over, tried to grab the gun out of my hand.

“You don’t understand!” I shouted, trying with all my might to get the gun away from him and at pointed back at the phantom sitting mere inches from my face.

“Put the gun down, you idiot!” My employer said, but it was too late. I lined up the shot and was about to shoot through the windscreen when I felt a fist to my jaw. The force of the blow knocked me sideways; the gun went off though I know not how. The screaming continued, but the timbre had changed, deepened somewhat. I shook myself and opened my eyes to find my employer staring back at me, half of his jaw taken by the bullet as he screamed directly from his vocal chords.

I heard the creature laughing amidst the chaos, sound as harsh as steel. So she had waited here, in her last resting place, until the day I returned. Her revenge must have been four years in the making, four years and now it had come to fruition. Here was to be my end, fittingly at the hands of my first target while my employer lay bleeding to death.

No. No, I would not let her have the satisfaction. Struck with a new resolve yet still half paralysed with fear, I did the only thing my added brain could cope with. I felt for the accelerator, foot heavy as lead as it gripped the pedal underneath and pushed it down to the floor. The car lurched forward, a horrific shrieking accompanying the movement. I turned to see the phantom, staring at me with dead eyes, evidently waiting for my next move. She opened her mouth but I got there first, a pitiful wail escaping my lungs as the care moved closer to the water. She would not have this; she would not have the final say in my destiny.

The car hit the frozen lake with a tremendous roar, an awful sliding sensation of the car across the ice before it cracked underneath the weight. The floor parted beneath us and the car plunged forwards, back end rising as it sank almost vertically into the water.

I heard nothing after that, my ear drums having burst from the noise of the impact and my own screams.

Faces, so many faces I saw before me. I took some bitter pride in the fact that could put a name to each and every one of them.

After that, darkness, and blissful, blessed relief.


End file.
